Personal Best February 1982: Mariel Hemingway Looks Back on Her Iconic Role as a Young Track Star in Love with a Female Teammate in This Athletic Coming-of-Age Tale. (Justifying Our Love)

Article excerpt

Lesbian movie fans still talk about Personal Best for its gloriously frank sex scene between Hemingway and real-life Olympic hurdler Patrice Donnelly. "It was a powerful movie on many levels," says Hemingway. "I mean, I grew up on that film. I started it when I was 17; I was 21 by the time it came out. Not only did I have to train physically for that amount of time, this character I was playing--this Chris Cahill--was confused and growing up in the world. She just didn't know who she was. By the same token, I think I was a little bit like that myself. I had never had a boyfriend, I was still really a naive girl. So for me, it was a discovery of who I was. And I think it's why I wasn't uncomfortable with anything. I was in a period of my life where I was unsure anyway. There is the time where you wonder, Well, who knows what I am? I think I went through that a bit with that character," says the actress.

Hemingway's journey clearly brought her to a very hip place: She has since played gay several times, famously planting a lesbian smooch on Roseanne in prime time. …